Snow glinting in the hollows. The Great Bear and the Pole Star visible
between zoetroping tree limbs.

The wood is an ancient one, a relic
of the vast Holocene forest that once covered all of Ireland but which now has
almost completely gone. Huge oaks half a millennium old; tangled, many-limbed
hawthorns; red barked horse chestnuts.

“I don’t like it,” the man behind
the man with gun says.

“Just put up with it, my feet are getting wet too,” the man with the gun
replies.

“It’s not just that. It’s these
bloody trees. I can hardly see anything. I don’t like it. It’s spooky, so it
is.”

“Ach, ya great girl ya, pull
yourself together.”

But it is indeed spooky out here, in the hulking shadows of these
venerable oaks, four hours after midnight, in the middle of nowhere, while
Ireland sleeps, while Ireland dreams. . .

The little rise is a deceptively steep incline that takes my breath away
and I can see that I am going to need my new inhaler if it keeps up. The
inhaler, of course, is back in the glove compartment of the car because I
haven’t yet acquired the habit of taking it with me everywhere. Not that it
will make any difference in a few minutes anyway. A bullet in the head will fix
an incipient asthma attack every time.

“Hurry up there,” the man with the gun growls and for emphasis pokes the
ugly snub nose of the revolver hard into my back.

I say nothing and continue to trudge at the same pace through the nettle
banks and ferns and over huge, lichen-covered yew roots.

We walk in silence for the next few minutes. Victim. Gunman. Gunman’s
assistants. It is a cliché. This exact scene has played out at least a thousand
times since 1968 all over rural Ulster. I myself have been the responding
officer on half a dozen bodies found face down in a sheugh, buried in a shallow
grave or dumped in a slurry pit on the high bog. The victims always show
ligature marks on the wrists where they have been cuffed or tied and the bullet
is always a headshot behind the left or right ear usually from less than a
metre away and almost always from above.

Trudge, trudge, trudge we go up the
hill following a narrow forest trail.

If I was so inclined I could believe in the inherent malevolence of this
place: moonlight distorting the winter branches into scarecrows, the smell of
rotting bog timber, and just beyond the path, in the leaf litter on the forest
floor, those high pitched unsettling sounds that must be the life-and-death
skirmishes of small nocturnal animals. But the pathetic fallacy has never been
my cup of tea and I’m no romantic either. Neither God, nor nature, nor St
Michael The Archangel, the patron saint of policemen, is coming to save me. I have to save me. These men are going
to kill me unless I can talk or fight
my way out of it.

A fire-break in the forest.

Sky again.

Is the blue a little lighter in the east? Maybe it’s later than I
thought. The interrogation didn’t seem to go on too long but you lose track of
time when you’re tied to a chair with a hood on your head. Could it be five in
the morning? Five thirty? They’ve taken my watch so I can’t know for sure but wasps
and bluebottles are beginning to stir and if you listen you can hear the first
hints of the morning chorus: blackbirds, robins, wood pigeon. Too early in the
year for cuckoos, of course.

Who is going to teach Emma about the birds and their calls when they
shoot me? Will Beth still drive out to Donegal so Emma can spend time with her
grandparents? Probably not. Probably Beth will move to England after this.

Maybe that would be for the best anyway.

There’s no future in this country.

The future belongs to the men behind me with the guns. They’re welcome
to it. Over these last fifteen years I’ve done my best to fight entropy and
carve out a little local order in a sea of chaos. I have failed. And now I’m
going to pay the price of that failure.

“Come on Duffy, no slacking now,” the man with the gun says.

We cross the firebreak and enter the wood again.

Just ahead of us on the trail a large old crow flaps from a hawthorn
branch and alerts all the other crows that we are blundering towards them.

Caw, caw, caw!

Always liked crows. They’re smart. As smart as the cleverest dog breeds.
Crows can recall human faces for decades. They know the good humans and the bad
humans. When these thugs forget what they’ve done to me this morning the crows
will remember.

Comforting that. My father taught me the calls and the collective nouns
of birds before I even knew my numbers. Murder
of crows, unkindness of ravens, kit of wood pigeon, quarrel of—

“Don’t dilly-dally, get a move on there, Duffy! I see what you’re about!
Keep bloody walking,” the man with the gun says.

“It’s the slope,” I tell him and look back into his balaclava covered
face.

“Don’t turn your head, keep walking,” he says and pokes me in the back
with the revolver again. If my hands weren’t cuffed I could use one of those
pokes to disarm him the way that Jock army sergeant taught us in self defence
class back in 1980. When you feel the gun in your back you suddenly twist your
whole body perpendicular to the gunman presenting only air as your hands whip
around and grab his weapon hand. After that it’s up to you - break the wrist
and grab the gun or kick him in the nuts and grab the gun. The Jock sergeant
said that you’ve got about a 75 per cent chance of successfully disarming your
opponent if you’re fast enough. Lightning turn, speedy grab, no hesitation. We
all knew that the sergeant had pulled those statistics right out of his arse
but even if it was only one chance in ten it was better than being shot like a
dog.

Moot point this morning though. My hands are behind my back in police
handcuffs. Even if I do spin round fast enough I can’t grab the gun and if I
suddenly made a break for it I am sure to fall over or get shot in the back.

No, my best chance will be if I can talk to them, try to persuade them;
or if that doesn’t work (and it almost certainly won’t) then I’ll have to try
something when they uncuff me and give me the shovel to dig my own grave. I
will certainly be going into a grave. If they just wanted to kill a copper,
they would have shot me at the safe house and dumped my body on a B road and
called the BBC. But not me, me they have been told to disappear. Hence this walk in the woods, hence the man behind the
man with the gun carrying a shovel. The question is why? Why does Duffy have to
disappear when killing a peeler would be a perfect morale boost for the cause
at this time?

There can only be one reason why. Because if my body actually shows up
it’ll bring heat on Harry Selden and Harry Selden, despite his professions of
innocence, does not want heat.

The gradient increases and I try to calm my breathing.

Easy does it now,
Sean, easy does it.

I walk around a huge fallen oak lying there like a dead god.

The earth around the oak is soft and I slip on a big patch of lichen and
nearly go down.

“Cut that out!” the man with the gun growls as if I’ve done it on
purpose.

I right myself somehow and keep walking.

Don’t dilly-dally, he said earlier.

You don’t hear that expression much anymore. He must be an older man. Older
than he sounds. I might be able to talk to a man like that. . .

Out of nowhere a song comes back to me, played 4/4 time by my
grand-father on the concertina:

My old man said
"Foller the van, and don't dilly dally on the way".

Off went the van wiv
me 'ome packed in it, I followed on wiv me old cock linnet.

But I dillied and
dallied. Dallied and dillied,

Now you can't trust a
special like the old time coppers,

When you’re lost and
broke and on your uppers. . .

The concertina
playing is note perfect but the singing. . .my grandfather who was from a very
well-to-do street in Foxrock, Dublin can’t do a Cockney accent to save his
life.

Isn’t that strange though? The whole song, lurking there in my memory
these twenty five years.

Oh yes, concertinas
look fiendishly complicated, Sean, but they’re easy when you get the hang of
them.

Really?

Sure. Have a go, let
me show you how to—

“Jesus will you hurry up you peeler scum!” the man with the gun says. “You
think you have nothing to lose? We don’t have to make this quick, you know. We
don’t have to be easy on you.”

“This is you going easy?”

“We’ve let you keep your bollocks, haven’t we?”

“I’m going as fast as I can. You try walking through this lot with your
hands cuffed behind your back. Maybe if you undid these handcuffs which you’ve
put on far too tight anyway.”

“Shut up! No one told you to speak. Shut up and keep bloody moving.”

“Ok. Ok.”

Trudge, trudge, trudge up
the hill.

The slope increases again and the forest is thinning out. At the edge of
it I can see sheep fields and hills and perhaps to the north that dark smudge
is the Atlantic Ocean. We are only a forty five minute drive from Belfast, but
we are in another world completely, far from planes and machines, far from the
visible face of the war. Another Ireland, another age. And yes, the stars are
definitely less clear now, the constellations fading into the eggshell sky. Dawn
is coming, but dawn won’t save me. I’ll be dead before sun-up if they are even
half way competent, which I think they are.

“What is the matter with them?” the
man with the gun mutters to himself. “Hurry up you two!” he yells to the
others.

I’ve been told not to look back, but this confirms what I’ve suspected.
Of the five men who lifted me, one is waiting back at the car, one is waiting
at the bottom of the trail to be a look-out and the other three are going to do
the deed itself.

“All right, no one told you to stop, keep going, Duffy!” the man with
the gun says.

“My police physical. I thought it was just too much smoking but the
doctor said I had developed asthma. I’ve got an inhaler.”

“Rubbish!”

“It’s true.”

“Did you bring your inhaler?”

“Nope. It’s back in the glove compartment of my car.”

“What’s going on? Are we going to
top him here?” one of the two others asks, catching us up. The one complaining
about the spooky trees. The one with the shovel.

“He claims he’s got asthma. He says he can’t breathe,” the man with the
gun says.

“Aye, cold morning like that will give it to you. Our Jack has asthma,”
this second man says. Younger than the man with the gun, he’s wearing a denim
jacket, tight bleached jeans and white sneakers. The shovel is an old model:
heavy wooden handle, cast-iron blade, low centre of gravity . . .

“I don’t believe in asthma. Asthma’s
a modern invention. Fresh air is all you need,” the man with the gun says.

“Well you can talk to our Jack’s mum, she’s been to the best doctors on
the Waterside so she has.”

The third man reaches us. He’s smaller than the others. He’s wearing a brown
balaclava and a flying jacket.

No, not he. It’s a woman. She
didn’t speak during the car ride but if I’d been smarter I would have twigged
that that smell in the back was her perfume. Thought it was the car’s air
freshener. She also is carrying a gun. An old .45. Look at that gun. US Army
issue. 1930’s model ACP. That’s been in somebody’s shoebox since the GIs were
here in WW2. There wouldn’t be any suffering with a weapon like that. Wouldn’t
even hear the shot. An instantaneous obliteration of consciousness. Wouldn’t feel
anything. Sentience into darkness just like that. And then, if Father McGuigan
is correct, an imperceptible passage of time followed by the resurrection of
the body at the End of Days. . .

“Is this it? Is this the spot?” she asks.

“No we’ve a wee bit to go yet,” the man with the revolver says.

“Can we just do it here, we’re miles from everybody,” shovel man wonders.

“We do it where we’re told to do it,” the leader insists. “It’s not far
now anyway. Here, let me show you.”

He unfolds a home made map on
thick, coarse paper. It’s like no cartography I have ever seen, filled with esoteric
symbols and pictograms and mysterious crisscrossing paths and lines. The guy’s
an eccentric who makes his own maps. In other circumstances entirely we’d
probably get on like a house on fire.

“What is this? Some new thing from the Ordnance Survey?” the woman asks.

“No! God no. ‘Ordnance Survey’ she says.”

“What is it?”

“Each one of us should make a surveyor’s map of his lost fields and
meadows. Our own map. With our own scale and legend,” the man with the gun
says.

“What do you mean ‘our lost fields’?” the woman says irritably.

“He’s quoting Gaston Bachelard,” I say.

“Who asked you? Shut up!” the man with the gun snaps.

“Gaston who?” the man with the shovel wonders.

“Look him up. There’s more to life than the pub, the bookies and the
dole office you know. Asthma my arse! There is no asthma. Have you noticed that
none of us have fallen? Have you noticed how quickly our feet have become
accustomed to the ground?” the man with the gun says.

“Not really,” the woman replies.

“For the last half hour our eyes have been secreting rhodopsin. We’re
adapting to the dark. That’s why you have to get outside, away from artificial
illumination. Good for the eyes, good for the soul.”

“Rhodopsin?” the woman asks.

“It’s a protein receptor in the retina. It’s the chemical that rods use
to absorb photons and perceive light. The key to night vision.”

“What on Earth are you talking about, Tommy?” the woman says.

“No names!”

“Ach what does it matter if we use our names. Sure he’s going to be dead soon anyway,” the man with the shovel says.

“Doesn’t matter if he’s going to be dead or not. It’s the protocol! No
names. Did youse ever listen during
the briefings? Bloody kids!” Tommy
mutters and folds away his map in a huff.

“Is it much further?” the woman asks.

“Come on let’s get moving,” Tommy shouts, pointing the gun at me again.

Trudge, trudge, trudge up the hill,
but, it must be said that I have learned much in this little interaction. The
man with the gun is about 45 or 50. A school biology teacher? All that stuff
about protein receptors. . .No, he probably read all that in New Scientist magazine and remembered
it. Not biology. Doesn’t seem like the type who was smart enough to get a pure
science degree. Geography maybe. Bit of a hippy, probably a lefty radical, and that
was definitely a Derry accent. We almost certainly went to the same rallies in
the early 70’s. Definitely a Catholic too which would mean he’s probably a
teacher St Columb’s, St Joseph’s or St Malachy’s. That’s a lot to work with.
And he’s the leader, a couple of decades older than the other two. If I can
turn him the rest will snap into line.

A big if.

“Rhodopsin my foot. I fell,” shovel man says passing the woman the water
bottle. “Twice. And it’s going to be worse going down hill. Mark my words.
We’ll all be going arse over tit. You’ll see.”

The woods are thinning out a bit now and in the far west I can see
headlights on a road. Ten miles way though and going the other direction. No
help from there.

A gust of clear, elemental wind blows down from the hilltop. I’m only
wearing jeans and a t shirt and my DM’s. At least it’s my lucky Che Guevara T
shirt hand printed and signed by Jim Fitzpatrick himself. If a dog walker or
random hiker finds my body a few years hence and the t shirt hasn’t decayed
maybe they’ll be able to identify me from that.

“Careful on this bit!” Tommy says. “Its mucky as anything. There’s a bog
hole over there. Dead ewe in it. But once we’re through that, we’re there.”

We wade through a slew of black trees roots and damp earth and finally
arrive at a dell in the wood that must be the designated execution spot.

It’s a good place to kill someone. The ring of trees will muffle the gun
shots and the overhanging branches will protect the killers from potential
spying eyes in helicopters and satellites.

“We’re here,” Tommy says, looking at his map again.

“There must have been a better way to come than this,” shovel man says,
exhausted. “Look at my trainers. These were brand new gutties! Nikes. They are
soaked through to the socks.”

“That’s all you can say? Look at my gutties! Complain, complain,
complain. Do you have no sense of decorum? This is a serious business. Do you
realise we’re taking a man’s life this morning?” Tommy says.

“I realise it. But why we have to do it in the middle of nowhere half
way up a bloody mountain I have no idea.”

“And here’s me thinking you’d appreciate the gravity of the task or even
a wee bit of nature. Do you even know even what these are?” Tommy asks pointing
at the branches overhead.

“Trees?”

“Elm trees! For all we know maybe the last elm trees in Ireland.”

“Elm trees my arse.”

“Aye, as if you know trees. You’re from West Belfast,” Tommy snarls.

“There are trees in Belfast. Trees all over the shop! You don’t have to
live in a forest to know what a bloody tree is. You know who lives in the woods?
Escaped mental patients. Place is full of them. And cultists. Ever see The Wicker Man? And big cats. Panthers. The Sunday World has a photograph of—”

Shovel man uncuffs me and leaves the
shovel on the ground next to me. All three of them stand way back to give me
room.

“You know what to do, Duffy,” Tommy
says.

“You’re making a big mistake,” I say
to him, looking into his brown eyes behind the balaclava. “You don’t realise
what you’re doing. You’re being used. You’re—”

Tommy points the revolver at my
crotch.

“I’ll shoot you in the bollocks if
you say one more word. I’ll make you dig with no nuts. Now, shut up and get to
work.”

I rub my wrists for a moment, pick up the shovel and start to dig. The
ground is damp and soft and forgiving. It won’t take me ten minutes to dig a
shallow grave through this stuff.

Everyone is staying well out of shovel swinging range. They may be new
at this but they’re not stupid.

“I’ll be glad when this is over,”
the woman whispers to the younger man. “I’m dying for a cup a tea.”

“And I could do with a ciggie. Can’t
believe I left them back at the farm,” he replies.

“Tea and cigarettes is all they can
think about when we’re taking a man’s life,” Tommy growls to himself.

“It’s easy for you, you don’t smoke
I. . .”

I turn down the volume so they’re nothing more than background noise

I think of Beth and Emma as I dig through a surprising line of chalk in
all this peat. Chalk.

Emma’s smile, Beth’s green eyes.

Emma’s laugh.

Let that be the last thing in my consciousness. Not the babel of these
misguided fools.

Shovel.

Earth.

Shovel.

Always knew that death was a strong possibility in my line of work but
it was absurd that that banal case of the dead drug dealer in Carrickfergus could
have led to this. As standard a homicide as you’re ever likely to see in
Ulster. Ridiculous.

Earth.

Shovel.

Earth.

Shovel.

Gasping for. . .

Having trouble breathing again.

Gasping for—

Gasping for—

They think I’m faking it.

I have taxed their patience.

Someone pushes me and I go down.

Spreadeagled on my back in the black peat.

“Let’s just top him now,” a voice says from a thousand miles away.

“Yeah, all right.”

Above me tree-tops, crows, sky.

And the yellow dark, the red dark, and the deep blue dark. . .

Chapter 1 No Hay Banda

County
Donegal is certainly not the wettest place on planet Earth; 130 inches of rain
a year in Donegal may be a typical average high, but that’s nothing compared
to, say, Mawsynram in India where over 400 inches of rain can fall in a
calendar year. Crucially, however, that rain comes during the monsoon and the
monsoon only lasts for about ten weeks. The rest of the year in Mawsynram is probably
rather pleasant. One can imagine walking in the foothills of the Himalayas or
perhaps taking a guided excursion to the tea plantations of Barduar. Donegal
may not have the sheer amount of precipitation as Mawsynram but it makes up for
this in the dogged persistence of its rain. Rain has been measured in some
parts of Donegal on 300 days out of the year and if you add in the days of
mist, mizzle and snow you could be looking at a fortnight in which some form of
moisture does not fall to earth.

It is somewhat of a paradox then
that until the arrival of cheap packet flights to Spain, Donegal was the
preferred holiday destination for many people in Northern Ireland. All my
childhood holidays were taken in Donegal at a succession of bleak caravan sites
on windswept, cold, rainy beaches. Scores of parents wrapped in thick woollen
jumpers and Sou’westers could be seen up and down these beaches driving their
small, shivering children into the Atlantic Ocean with the injunction that they
could not come out until they had enjoyed themselves.

My memories of Donegal had never been particularly
good ones and when my father took early retirement and my parents moved to a
cottage near Glencolumbkille I was a reluctant visitor.

Things had changed, of course, with the birth of Emma.
My folks demanded to see their grand-daughter and Beth and I had driven out
there for Christmas and now here we were again in the early spring.
Glencolumbkille is in the Gaeltacht, with almost everyone in these parts
speaking the quaint Donegal version of Irish. It is a little white-washed place
straight out of The Quiet Man with a
spirit grocer, a post office, a pub, a chapel, a golf course, a small hotel, a
beach and a cliff-path. A pleasant enough spot if you didn’t mind rain or
boredom or the hordes of embedded high school students from Dublin practicing
their Irish on you. One of these kids stopped me when I was out getting the
milk. “Excuse me, sir. An gabh tu pios
caca?”

“No I would not like any cake, thank
you.”

He tried again, this time apparently
asking for the way to the bandstand.

I explained in slow, patient Irish that
there was neither a bandstand nor a band in Glencolumbkille.

He cocked his head to one side,
puzzled.

“There is no bandstand. There is no
band. No hay banda, il n’est pas une
orchestra.”

“Oh, I see,” he said in English. “No
I was looking for the way to the beach hut, we’re supposed to meet at the beach
hut.”

“It’s just over there on the beach. And the word you’re
looking for is bothán trá.”

“Thanks very much, pops,” he said
and sauntered off.

“Pops indeed,” I muttered as I
bought the milk and a local paper and I was still muttering as I walked back to
the house where mum and Beth were talking about books.

My mother, Mary, had taken
immediately to Beth despite her being a Protestant, monolingual, well off,
younger and, worst of all, not a fan of Dolly Parton.

“Don’t you even like ‘Little Sparrow’?” she had asked
on hearing about this calamity.

“I’m so sorry Mrs Duffy, it’s just not my cup of tea.
But I’ll listen again if you want me to,” Beth had said conciliatingly.

This morning they were talking about Beth’s master’s
thesis which she was trying to do on Philip K Dick, something the stuffy
English department at Queens were none too happy about. My mother’s sympathies
lay with Queens, as, secretly did mine.

“But Mr Dick, apparently, is only just deceased. You
can’t tell if a writer’s any good or not until they’re dead a generation, at
least,” mum was saying.

Beth looked at me for support but there was no way I
stepping into that minefield.

“Milk,” I said, putting the carton on the kitchen
table. “And I’ve brought dad his paper,” I added quickly before nimbly exiting and
leaving them to it.

My father also had taken to Beth and he discovered
that he enjoyed the company of his daughter-in-law and grand-daughter so much
that while we were here he even, temporarily, lost all interest in his beloved
golf and bird-watching. At night he would talk to us in low tones about Emma’s
prodigious achievements in ambulation, speech and the manipulation of wooden
blocks.

“Talking at six months! And almost walking. You can
see it. She wants to walk. Standing there, thinking about it. She said ‘grand-pa’!
I heard her. That girl is a genius. I’m serious, Sean. You should start
speaking to her in French and Irish. She’ll be fluent by the time she’s one.
And you should have seen her make that Lego tower. Incredible. . .”

My parents’ cottage faced the ocean and at the far end
of the house there was a little sound proof library with a big double glazed plate-glass
window that looked west. Dad’s record player was over twenty years old and his
speakers were shite but his collection was eclectic and pretty good. Since
moving to Donegal he had discovered the works of the English composer Arnold
Bax who had spent much of the 1920’s in Glencolumbkille.

I walked down to the library, found a comfy chair to
look through the local newspaper and put on Bax’s really quite charming
‘November Woods’. Dad came in just after the strange, muted climax which was so
reminiscent of the instrumental music of the early Michael Powell films.

“Hello, Sean, am I bothering you?”

“No, da, not at all. Just listening to one of your
records. Arnold Bax isn’t bad is he?”

“No you’re right there. He’s wonderful. There’s a
lightness of touch but it’s not insubstantial or frivolous. His heyday was the
same time as that of Bix Beiderbecke. It’s a pity they couldn’t of played
together. Bax and Bix. You know?”

“Yes dad,” I said, stifling a groan.

He sat down in the easy chair next to me. He was sixty
five now, but with a full head of white hair and a ruddy sun-tanned face from
all the birding and golfing he looked healthy and good. He could have passed
for an aging French flaneur if he hadn’t been dressed in brown slacks, brown
sandals (with white socks) and a ‘Christmas’ jumper with reindeers on it.

He handed me the Irish
Times crossword and a thesaurus. I gave him the thesaurus back. “That’s
cheating,” I said. “What clue is bothering you?”

“Oh, I see. This is the world's worst thesaurus anyway.
Not only is it terrible, it's terrible,” he said and began to chuckle with such
suppressed mirth that I thought he was going to do himself a mischief.

“Are you still on for tomorrow?” he asked. “I’ve been
sensing that you don’t want to do it, son.”

My father’s senses were completely correct. I didn’t
want to do it. Tomorrow we were driving to Lough Derg, about fifteen minutes
inland from here, where we were going to get the boat over to Station Island
for the St Patrick’s Purgatory pilgrimage. You could do the pilgrimage twice a
year: in the summer (which is when nearly everyone did it) or during Lent. The
whole thing had got started 1500 years earlier when, to encourage St Patrick with
his mission among the Godless Irish, Jesus Christ had come down from heaven and
shown St Patrick a cave on Station Island that led all the way down to
Purgatory. Ever since then it had been an important place of pilgrimage for
devout Catholics from all over Europe. My father had never been a devout
Catholic but his interest in Lough Derg had been kindled by Seamus Heaney’s new
book-length poem ‘Station Island’ about his own pilgrimage to Lough Derg. Heaney’s
poem and his slew of amiable interviews all over Irish TV and radio had made
the place sound spiritually and philosophically fascinating and in a moment of weakness
I had agreed to my father’s request to accompany him; but now, of course, that
we were on the eve of our journey I was not bloody keen at all. The idea of
spending three days fasting and praying with my dad while walking barefoot
around a damp, miserable island with a bunch of God bothering weirdoes didn’t
sound like my idea of fun.

“Oh Sean, I’m glad you’re still
enthusiastic. It’ll be good for all of us. Beth, Mary and Emma will get some
quality time together and you and I will get closer. Maybe even closer to God
too.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in
God. That’s what you told Father Cleary.”

“Well, Sean, when you get to my age,
you think to yourself that there’s more things in Heaven and Earth. . .you
know?”

I didn’t know if I believed in God
either but I believed in St Michael the patron saint of policemen and I owed my
thanks to The Blessed Virgin, who, I reckoned, had helped change Beth’s mind
about the abortion in Liverpool nearly a year ago.

“Wouldn’t you rather do the
pilgrimage in the summer like normal people?” I asked.

“Nope. The Pope says that if you do
a pilgrimage to one of the traditional sites during Lent it’ll be particularly
blessed, so it will.”

“Hark onto Alfred Duffy quoting the
Pope. Alfred Duffy who forced Dr McGuinness to teach us about Darwin. What’s
happened to you, da? Did you get hit in the head with a golf ball or
something?”

He grinned and leaned back in the
chair, his watery blue eyes twinkling. “Oh, I just remembered what I wanted to
ask you. You’re on for the quiz tonight? We’ve never won yet but with you on
our team I think we have a good chance of beating the GAA.”

“Will it be in English? If Beth
wants to come?”

Dad smiled at the mention of Beth’s
name. “Ah, you got a good one there. You know it doesn’t bother us that she’s
a, you know. . .”

“Red-head?”

“Protestant.”

“Is she a Prod? I hadn’t noticed. Well
that explains everything.”

“All you have to do now is marry her
and your mother will be in clover.”

“A wedding? Come on, da. All our lot
down one side of the church, them lot down the other?” I said, not mentioning
the fact that Beth had told me never to even think about proposing to her. “And Beth’s father isn’t exactly a fan of
mine,” I added.

“What does he do again?”

“Builds houses.”

“He works with his hands. I like
that.”

“Like Gwendolyn Fairfax I doubt very
much if he’s ever seen a spade. He got the firm from his father. All he seems
to do is sit in his office and think up the street names for all his new
developments.”

“What does he name them?”

“Mostly after obscure members of the
royal family. Some Bible stuff. I only met the man twice and if I hadn’t been
armed with my Glock I think he would have tried to beat me to death with one of
his golf clubs.”

“Ah, golfer is he? He can’t be all
bad. What’s his handicap?”

“Handicap? Well, he’s got an
eighteenth century mind-set, he’s stinking rich and for recreation he golfs at
Down Royal or sails about on his bloody great yacht. Is that handicap enough?”

“Yes you’ve said she comes from
money. Down Royal though. I’d love to play that course. You couldn’t possibly
ask if I—”

“No, I couldn’t! I’ve told you, he’s not my biggest
fan.”

“Maybe if you made what they used to call ‘an honest
woman’ of his daughter he wouldn’t be so hostile.”

“Dad, trust me a wedding is not in
the cards.”

“Well, I’m not going to try to force
you. Every time I’ve tried to force you to do anything it hasn’t worked. Backfired
in me face so it has. I still regret sending you off to that bird watching camp
on Tory Island. You cried and cried and I don’t think you ever picked up a
birding book again after that.”

“Damn right. To this day I can’t
tell the difference between a woodcock and a bog snipe,” I said and my father,
who was easily pleased, erupted into gales of laughter (for, of course, as I’m
sure you know, a woodcock and a bog snipe are the same thing).

Dinner that night was a high spirited
affair. One of dad’s neighbours had caught a massive sea bass and mum had
cooked it in a white wine sauce with scallops and potatoes while Beth and I took
Emma down the beach to throw stones at the breakers.

We sat in the dining room under the portraits of JFK
and the Derby winning horse Shergar (both assassinated in their prime) while a
turf fire burned in the range and rain lashed the windows.

Beth, Emma and mum stayed at home while dad and I trudged to The Lost Fisherman for the village’s
big event of the week if you didn’t count mass on Sunday (and fewer and fewer
people did with each fresh week bringing a fresh church scandal). Dad introduced
me to all his golfing cronies and told them that with me on the team we were
sure to crush those arrogant bastards from the GAA.

In the event the GAA performed
poorly and by the final general knowledge round it was between the golf club
and the bowling club for the prize pool of fifty quid. Marty O’Reilly said that
there would be a tie break question.

“This is the question and I want you
to be very precise with your answer. No shouting out from any of the other
teams. All right, here goes. What were the very first words spoken from the
Apollo 11 astronauts on the surface of the moon? Everybody get that? Good. As
usual write your answers on the card and bring them up. I’ll give you two
minutes to think about it. Stop that! No whispering from any of the other
teams!”

“The very first words from the
moon?” Davy Smith said in a panic but I knew there was no need to worry because
my dad was grinning to himself.

“Never fret, Alfred knows,” I said.

“Do you know right enough, Alfred?”
Big Paul McBride asked.

“Look over there at them bowling boys. They think they
know the answer but they don’t!” Dad said almost rubbing his hands with glee.

“What’s that supposed to mean, da?”

“A lot of people think the first words spoken on the
surface of the moon are ‘That’s one small step for man – that’s one giant leap
for mankind.’ But it’s not. It’s not even ‘that’s one small step for a man’ which Armstrong claims he says.
That’s what Armstrong said when he first stepped off the bottom rung of the
ladder the lunar lander but him and Aldrin had been talking in there for an
hour by then.”

“Well,” my
father began, smiling at us beatifically like the Venerable Bede. “Not many
people know this but as the lunar lander, the Lem, as it was called, was
touching down on the moon they had a little light to let them know when they’d
actually touched down. It was the contact light and as soon as they touched
down on the surface Buzz Aldrin had to tell Armstrong that the contact light
was on so he could turn off the engines. So they touch down and the light comes
on and Aldrin says ‘contact light,’ ergo the very first words spoken on the
moon were ‘contact light’.”

“Are you sure now, Alfred?” Big Paul said, poised with
this pen. “This’ll be the first time we’ve ever won out right.”

“I’m sure,” Dad insisted.

We wrote our answer on the card. The bowling club
wrote down their answer and we both handed the cards up to Marty.

Marty grabbed the microphone and dramatically shook
his pinched, aged face from side to side. “Ladies and gentlemen, you are not
going to believe it! Both teams got the wrong answer! Both teams go it wrong so
this week there’s no clear winner and we’re going to divide the pot. The
bowlers wrote ‘that’s one small step for man’ and the golf club lost their
heads completely and wrote ‘contact light’ but the right answer, is, of course:
‘Houston, the Eagle has landed’!”

When we got home the rain had stopped so Beth, Emma and
mum met us at the beach at the end of the lane.

“How did it go? Did youse win?” Mum asked.

“I don’t think dad wants to talk about it, there’s was
a bit of a shouting match at the end there, let’s just get inside and change
the subject,” I said quickly.

Dad who was still red in the face said nothing and
marched down to the library where we heard discordant and angry music that
might well have been Bax and Bix.

The next morning I packed for the
pilgrimage to Station Island with sleet and hail hammering the windows. It was
the first week of March but we were still firmly in the grip of winter. I sat
on the window ledge and caught my breath. For the last few weeks I’d been
having trouble catching my breath in the mornings. If I wasn’t worried about a
diagnosis of cancer or emphysema I would have gone to the doctor before this.
I’d cut way down on the smokes, maybe it was time to cut them out completely?

“How are you doing, Sean?” Beth
asked and before I could answer added: “You shouldn’t look so gloomy, I think
this will be great for you and your dad.”

“You really want to know how I
feel?”

“Is it going to be something
positive?”

“I have nothing positive to say. Will you take two
negatives?”

“No.”

“Jesus Beth, I really don’t want to
go on this bloody trip. I only agreed because I thought he’d forget all about
it.”

“Sean! Phone!” My mum shouted from
the living room.

I walked down the hall and picked up
the receiver. “Hello?”

“Sean, I’m really sorry to bother
you on your holiday.”

It was Detective Sergeant McCrabban.
I’d recognised his dour, sibilant Ballymena intake of breath before he’d said a
word.

“No, but they killed him with an
arrow. Shot him in the back with an arrow, so they did.”

“Injuns?”

“Well. . .”

“Or that
miscreant from Sherwood Forest who gives the local law enforcement agencies so
much difficulty?”

“Here’s the bit that I thought might
get you intrigued. This is the second drug dealer that’s been shot with an
arrow in as many days.”

“Two drug dealers. Both of them shot
with arrows?”

“If you want to be technical about
it – and I know you do – they were actually crossbow bolts.”

“From the same crossbow?”

“We haven’t removed the bolt from
the second victim yet. We’ve only just discovered him.”

“I see. And this first guy?”

“He lived.”

“Well that’s good. I suppose. Where was he shot?”

“In the back like victim number two.”

“Did he happen to see who shot him?”

“Maybe, but it’s the usual thing.
He’s not telling us anything.”

“Of course not.”

“So do you want to come back for it?
Or do you want me and Lawson to handle it? Up to you, Sean, but I thought I’d
let you know. Our first murder in nearly a year and a weird one at that. . .”

I lowered my voice. “Crabbie, just
between us you’re a total lifesaver, mate. Have you heard of a thing called St
Patrick’s Purgatory?”

“No.”

“No why would ya, you big Proddy
heretic.”

I quickly explained the nature of
the pilgrimage and what my dad wanted us to do.

“So you see Crabbie if I have to
rush back to Carrickfergus to help solve this crossbow-wielding-vigilante-potential
serial-killer case I won’t have to go to that bloody island and get verrucae, mildew
and trench foot.”

Crabbie, however, was not one to shirk off religious
obligations lightly. “No,” he said reflectively. “I think you should do that
thing with your father. It sounds very holy, so it does.”

“Crabbie listen, I’m coming back. Saint
Patrick and all the sinners in purgatory can wait.”

“All right, I won’t let anyone disturb the crime scene
till you get there. When do you think that would be?”

“It’s a one and a half hour drive back to
Carrickfergus. If the baby wasn’t in the car with me I’d be there in an hour,
but as it is I’ll have to leave the wife and kids off first and take it easy on
the roads. Be there in an hour and a half. Maybe eighty eight minutes, ok? Anything
else going on?”

“Did you hear about John Strong?”

“What about him?”

“He’s moving on.”

“To the choir invisible?”

“To Assistant Chief Constable.”

“Same thing really. Finally someone we almost like up
at command level.”

“Sunnylands Estate – why am I not surprised?
All right take it easy, mate.”

I hung up the phone and went into
the kitchen with a downcast look on my face.

“What’s the matter, Sean?”

“Mum, Dad, I’m really sorry but I have to go back to Carrickfergus.
There’s been a murder. Suspected serial
killer. Maybe even a vigilante. It’s action stations at Carrickfergus RUC. Top
brass have been on the phone. The BBC. You know how it is.”

“What does this
all mean, Sean?” Dad asked.

“I’ve got to get back. It’s all hands on deck. We’ll
have to do Saint Patrick’s Purgatory another time.”

I could see the look of relief flit
across dad’s face. “Oh dear. Dear oh dear. I’m disappointed, son. I really
wanted to go,” he lied like a trooper.

“I know dad. I wanted to do it too.
We’ll just have to go in the summer when the weather’s better. Or next year.”

“Yes! When the weather’s better.”

“A murder, Sean? You haven’t had one of those for a
while,” Mum said.

“Nope. This is the first this year. Some
drug dealer shot in the back with an arrow.”

“Like Saint Sebastian,” Mum said
sadly.

“Saint Sebastian was shot in the
front, love. Several times. You remember the painting by Botticelli,” Dad
prompted.

“So who am I thinking of that was shot in the back?”

“Jimmy Stewart in Broken
Arrow? He was shot in the back. He
survived but poor Debra Paget, his beautiful Apache wife, she died,” Dad
explained.

“Debra Paget,” Mum said thoughtfully.

“She was shot by Will Geer who, of course, went on to
play grandpa Walton,” Dad explained.

This was the heading the way of all their
conversations so I knew I had to nip it in the bud. I pointed at my watch. “Really
sorry about the pilgrimage, dad. I was so looking forward to it. But someone
has to keep the streets safe,” I said but neither of them was really listening
to me.

“Is Jimmy Stewart still alive?” Mum
asked.

“He is too! And in fine fettle. He
was on Gay Byrne just last year,” Dad insisted.

“Debra Paget, I know that name,” Mum
said.

“Of course you know Debra Paget!” Dad
insisted. “She was Elvis’s girlfriend in Love
Me Tender and she married Chang Kai-shek’s nephew. In real life that is,
not in Love Me Tender.”

We packed our bags, gave hugs all
round and ran outside into the rain.

I looked underneath the BMW for bombs, secured Emma in
her car seat and got Beth comfy in the front.

I got in the driver’s side, turned
the key in the ignition and we both grinned as the Beemer’s throaty, fuel-injected
six cylinder engine roared into life.

Eighty-eight minutes later I was at
the crime scene.

Chapter 2 Just Another Dead Drug Dealer

A
smallish crowd had gathered in front of 15 Mountbatten Terrace in Sunnylands
Estate. No doubt the crowd would have been bigger if it hadn’t been raining and
this wasn’t a Monday. Monday was one of the two signing on days at the DHSS and
more or less everyone in this particular street was either unemployed or on
disability and therefore needed to sign on. This had not always been the case. When
the Sunnylands Estate had been built in the early 1960s Carrickfergus had 3
major textile plants and the shipyards in nearby Belfast employed over twenty
thousand people. Now the factories had all been closed, the shipyards were down
to a rump of 300 men at Harland and Wolff and every scheme the government had
tried to bring employment to Northern Ireland had failed miserably. Emigration
or joining the police or civil service were your only legitimate options these
days. But illegitimate options were to be had joining the paramilitaries and
running protection rackets or if you were a very brave soul you could try your
hand at drug dealing.

Independent drug dealers were few
and far between because the Protestant and Catholic paramilitaries liked to
make an example of them from time to time to show the civilian population that
they, not the police, were the ones who could be trusted to “keep the streets
safe for the kids.” Of course everyone east of Boston, Massachusetts understood
that this was hypocrisy. In a series of agreements worked out at the very
highest levels in the mid 1980s the paramilitaries from all sides had
effectively divided up Belfast between themselves for the dealing of hash, heroin
and speed and the two newest (and most lucrative) drugs in Ireland: ecstasy and
crack cocaine.

Such independent drug dealers that
there were had to be very discreet or pay through the nose if they didn’t want
to get killed. Obviously this particular dead drug dealer hadn’t been discreet
or hadn’t paid the local paramilitary chieftain his cut. I’d been thinking
about the crossbow bolt in the car. Guns were to be had aplenty for the
paramilitaries but a private citizen might have difficulty getting one, which
you made you think that maybe some kid has a heroin overdose and his dad goes
out looking for justice. He can’t get a firearm but you get could bows and
crossbows at a sports good shop . . .Something like that, perhaps?

I parked the BMW and got out of the
vehicle. It was a grim little street and it must be truly hell around here in
the summer when the only distractions to be had were hassling single women at
the bus stop and building bonfires. Frank Sinatra’s upbeat Come Fly with Me was playing from an open living room window but the
crowd of about twenty people was sullen and malevolent. I could almost smell
the stench of cheap ciggies, unwashed armpits, solvents, lighter fluid and
Special Brew. They were mostly unemployed young men who had been drawn away from
wanking over page 3 by a murder on their doorsteps. I hated to leave my shiny
new BMW 535i sport on a street like this but what choice did I have?

Several wee muckers came over and began touching the
paintwork.

“Get your hands off that,” I said.

“Are you a policeman?” a very little girl asked.

“Yes!”

“Where’s your gun, then?”

I patted my shoulder holster.

“What type of gun is it?”

“A Glock. A man called Chekov sold it to me. I figure
I’ll use it at some point.” Pearls before swine but hey it’s these little
things that keep you going. I tried a different one on the girl: “Why don’t
blind people skydive?”

“Dunno mister.”

“Because it scares the crap out of their dogs.”

No smiles at all. I was going to have to go
slapstick with this lot and it was too early in the morning for Buster bloody
Keaton.

“Is that your car mister or did you knock it?” a tall particularly
sinister looking child asked with an unsettling lisp.

“Why aren’t you in school, sonny?”

“I got a note from the Royal. I get these terrible headaches.
I only go to school when I want to go now,” he explained.

“What’s your name, son?”

“Stevie, Stevie Unwin,” he said and I filed the name
away for the future when the thing in his brain that was giving him the headaches
would drive him to the top of a tower with a rifle.

“Mind the car, Stevie, don’t let anyone put their paws
on it,” I said, giving him the customary fiver and began walking towards the
crowd “Step aside there, step aside,” I said. The crowd parted reluctantly and
with hostility, people muttering highly original things like “bloody peelers”
and “bloody cops”.

Like Jules Maigret I arrived at the scène du crime thoroughly existentially
jaded. But lucky old Jules never had a scene like this. The dead drug dealer
was lying face down in his front yard, half way up the garden path. He had
orange hair and was wearing a sleeveless denim jacket that said “Slayer” on it
in rivets. Under the denim jacket was a bright blue motorcycle jacket. To
complete the ensemble he was wearing bleached white jeans and cowboy boots. The
crossbow bolt was sticking out of his back near his left shoulder.

I was surprised to find that the body had not been
cordoned off and there was no evidence of forensic men or forensic activity.
Indeed the crowd were so close to the corpse that their cigarette ash was
blowing onto the deceased, contaminating the crime scene.

My blood began to boil. In another police force you
would have called this chaos. One didn’t employ words like ‘chaos’ or ‘fiasco’
to the fine boys of Carrick CID, at least not in my presence, but if this
wasn’t chaos it could certainly do chaos’s job until the real chaos came along
in the shape of Ballyclare RUC or Larne RUC or those fuckheads from over the
water.

“Everyone get back!” I said physically pushing some of
the onlookers away from the body. “Back there, onto the pavement and put those
cigarettes out!”

Where were the forensic officers? And why weren’t there uniformed officers on
crowd control?

What the hell was happening?

Was this some kind of ambush? No, the spectators would
be a lot more cautious if there was about to be a hit. A forensic officer tea-break
perhaps? That was more likely given their strange ways but they’d never have
buggered off leaving a bunch of eejits dropping cigarette ash over their
corpse.

The crowd was nudging up again behind me. “Get back I
said. There’s nothing to see here, he won’t be doing any tricks, he’s not
friggin Lazarus.”

I examined the victim while the
crowd watched me expectantly and Sinatra sang ‘Chicago’ which he did on the
British but not the US version of this album. I could take or leave Sinatra,
mostly leave, and the record was getting on my nerves. “And somebody turn that effing
stereo off!” I yelled and almost immediately the record got yanked with a vinyl
scraping zzzzzipppp!

Now all was silence but for the wind
among the crisp packets and shopping bags and the braying of a goat attached by
a brick to a piece of rope in the overgrown yard of the house next door that was
attempting to reach over said fence and eat the victim’s shoelaces. It wasn’t
getting close but it too was slobbering all over the crime scene.

“And somebody move that goat!” I said.

“And who might you be when you’re at home?” a woman
asked with an East Belfast accent that sound like broken glass under a DM boot.

I reached in my pocket for my
warrant card but it was back with my bags at Coronation Road.

I pointed at a likely lad whose Liverpool FC scarf was
a sign of above average intelligence.

“Sonny, do me a favour and move that goat away from
the fence,” I said.

“What’ll I do with it?
“See that shopping trolley
over there filled with bricks? Tie it to that. Here’s a quid for a good job,” I
said.

He grabbed the rope went next door and tugged the goat
away from the body.

“Right! What happened here? Where did the other police
officers go?” I asked the crowd but now everyone was staring at their shoes and
saying nowt. The ever present/ever tedious Belfast rule: whatever you say, say nothing had come into effect.

“There were other police officers here this morning,
where are they now?”

Silence.

The rain increased a fraction and a mist began rolling
down the north road from the Antrim Hills. A man on all fours, perhaps with
species dysphoria, was attempting to communicate with the goat.

Christ this was depressing. It didn’t help when an
ice-cream van pulled up, parked itself at the end of the street and began
playing a selection of television themes. Its haunting version of Eastenders brought a few punters over.

This police/honest citizen liaison was getting
me nowhere. I lit a ciggie and went inside the house where I was met by a
distracted and visibly upset Detective Constable Lawson coming down the stairs.

“I’m so sorry, sir, it’s been a bit of a crazy
morning. I was just on the phone, I was just trying to call them, I wasn’t sure
what number, I. . .”

“Call whom?”
“Forensic.”

“Surely they were notified by dispatch?”
“Yes, sir. They’ve been and gone, sir.”

“They left?”

“Yes sir,” Lawson said, his lip trembling and
his bright blue-green eyes on the verge of tears.

“Are they finished?”

“No. They didn’t even get started. Chief
Inspector McCann said it was an unsafe work environment. He said it was union
regulations.”

“What union? What are they. . .Why isn’t the
victim even covered with a police blanket? He’s getting rained on, ashed on and
there’s little kids staring at him.”

“I’m so sorry, sir. I did ask for permission
but Inspector Dalziel sort of dismissed my request.”

“Inspector
Dalziel?”

“He got promoted while you were away, sir.”

“Let me get this straight Inspector Dalziel arrived from the station and took over the crime
scene?”

“Yes sir.”

“And wouldn’t let you put a police blanket
over the victim?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“He said, the goat would probably eat it and
ruin police property. He may have been being sarcastic sir I wasn’t sure. . .”

“Why didn’t you control the goat, Lawson?”

“I mentioned that as well, sir. I said that
the goat was slobbering over the fence potentially contaminating the crime
scene.”

“And what did Dalziel say to that?”

“He said that that was forensics’ problem. And
then he said that the goat was on someone else’s property and we’d need
permission to enter the house next door to take the goat away from the fence.”

“We’re the Old Bill we can do whatever the
fuck we want, son!” I said, really angry now.

I noticed that my fists were clenched and my
face must have been bright red. Kenny Dalziel had the same effect on everyone
he worked with and the bastard was not going to give me a heart attack. I
forced myself to take a couple of deep breaths and calm down.

“I’m sorry sir,” Lawson said all trembly
voiced.

“It’s not your
fault, son. Where the fuck is Sergeant McCrabban? He’s supposed to be in charge
of—”

“That’s what I mean by crazy. I thought you
knew, sir. Oh gosh I thought someone had told you!”

“Told me what?”

“Deauville’s wife, sir – Deauville’s the
victim, sir – she stabbed Sergeant McCrabban when he tried to get her off the
body so the forensic officers could do their work.”

“Uhm, I was just on the phone with him. Apparently
he’s fine, sir. No stitches, just a tetanus shot. She stabbed him with a fork. He
didn’t want to go to the hospital in the first place but—”

“What happened?”

“Mrs Deauville was very upset. Sergeant
McCrabban tried to move her away from the body and she stabbed him in the
shoulder with a fork. She’s a foreigner I think. We had to report the stabbing,
of course, and, uhm, Inspector Dalziel showed up. He ordered Mrs Deauville
placed in custody and he ordered Sergeant McCrabban to report himself to the
Royal Victoria Hospital as per the injury-at-work regulations.”

“Christ! And then what?”

“And then the forensic team left saying it was
an unsafe work environment.”

“And the forensic officer is this McCann
fellow, eh? Don’t know him. Ok. Then what happened?”

I bit my tongue. It wouldn’t do to let young
Lawson hear my full profanity laden tirade against a superior officer. “And then
Inspector Dalziel left with Mrs Deauville?” I asked.

“Yes sir.”

“Probably the first arrest he’s made in years,”
I couldn’t help but mutter.

“Unfortunately Inspector Dalziel took both constables
off crowd control to restrain Mrs Deauville in the back of the Land Rover so
that just me left here, sir.”

“Are forensic coming back or what?”

Lawson flipped open his notebook. “Chief Inspector
McCann said that with ‘police officers being stabbed and with a hostile crowd
in front of the house this was not a safe crime scene for his men to do their
work’ so they were withdrawing until the crime scene was secured.”

“Withdrawing to the nearest pub I’ll bet.”

“I wouldn’t know about that sir.”

“So Dalziel left just you to control the
crowd, canvas witnesses and conduct an entire murder investigation?”

“Yes sir. I’m sorry about all this, sir,” he
said correctly interpreting the look of horror on my face. For this was a
nearly perfect fuck up - all we needed now was a newspaper reporter or a random
inspection by the Chief Constable.

“All right Lawson we’ve got to move fast
before the press or a local councillor gets here. Go upstairs get a clean bed
sheet if you can find one and cover up the victim’s body. I’ve already taken
care of the goat. Once you’ve done that, get the crowd back onto the pavement
and if you are able please urge them to go indoors.”

“But how, sir?”

“Shoot one of them in the kneecaps every five
minutes until the rest get the message?” I suggested.

“Sir.”

“Just use your natural authority. I’ll call the
Royal check in on Crabbie, call forensic and get a new team down here pronto.
Now, go!”

Lawson found a clean sheet in a linen closet
and I called the Royal Victoria Hospital. They looked for Crabbie in Casualty
but he had already discharged himself and was on his way back to Carrick, which
was typical of him. Crabbie was one of the good guys: solid, dour, competent,
hard working, uncomplaining – a thousand men like him and you could do
anything: feed the world, build a bridge across the Bering Straits, terraform
Mars. There wasn’t another like him in Carrick RUC and I’ll bet at the Royal he
didn’t even ask the nurses for high dose opiates which is what I would have
done. I hung up and called my old mate Frank Payne from forensic and told him about
the behaviour of CI McCann to which he was suitably outraged.

“Kids today, eh, Francis?”

“You can say that again.”

“So you’ll send a team down pronto?”

“Aye. I’ll scratch your back and you scratch
my back.”

“If you mean I’ll owe you a favour, yes. But
I’m not going near that hairy back of yours, it’s like Mirkwood in there.”

“Just hold the fort there Duffy and I’ll have
a team down there in half an hour. Sunnylands Estate?”

“Yeah.”

“Fucking nightmare there is it?”

“Not as bad as some of the estates in these
parts. To
describe it as a UVF ridden shithole filled with whores, druggies and scumbags would
be ungenerous.”

“Aye well, do me a favour and don’t let the
crime scene get contaminated, eh? I’m just back from an arson in Larne and them
boys from Larne RUC were tramping size tens all over the shop.”

“Typical. You know what they say, Frank? What's
the difference between Larne and a yoghurt?”

“Dunno.”

“You leave them both alone for 60 years and
the yoghurt will grow a culture.”

“Hilarious, Duffy, don’t give up the day job.”

I hung up with Frank and next I called my
boss, Chief Inspector McArthur, explaining to him that we needed half a dozen constables
for witness canvassing and crowd management. It was a relatively slow day at
Carrick RUC so he said that that shouldn’t be a problem as long as it didn’t
involve over-time.

“I
don’t think over-time will be necessary, sir. I’d be surprised if anyone saw
anything at all sir. Not anything they’ll admit to us. We should have the
canvassing done in an hour or two.”

“And how’s Sergeant McCrabban? I heard he was
attacked?”

“He’s already discharged himself, sir.”

“I hope he doesn’t put a claim in.”

“He won’t sir. This is John McCrabban we’re
talking about here.”

Another police officer might have taken three
months off on disability or even sued the station for compensation but Crabbie
wouldn’t do either of those things.

“I’m relieved to hear it.”

“Sir, I’m also pretty sure Sergeant McCrabban
won’t be pressing charges so could you please have Mrs Deauville released from
the cells and brought up to the CID Incident Room? Maybe have a WPC give her a
cup of tea?”

“That’s not going to be possible, Duffy.”

“Why’s that, sir?”

“Inspector Dalziel sent her up to Castlereagh
Holding Centre for processing.”

“Castlereagh? For a stabbing?”

“Stabbing a police officer.”

Dalziel was no doubt cock a hoop over his
arrest but this wouldn’t do at all. If Mrs Deauville was processed at
Castlereagh we wouldn’t get to interview her for two or three days and as every
tedious fuck will tell you the first 48 hours are the most important in any criminal investigation.

“Sir, can you do me a favour and patch me into
Kelly at the switchboard?”

“Of course Duffy, see you later.”

“. . .Switchboard, this is Kelly.”

“Kelly, this is Sean Duffy, listen to me,
someone’s off in a Land Rover taking a Mrs Deauville to Castlereagh Holding
Centre. I want you to find out who it is and tell them to come back to Carrick
RUC. Ok?”

“You get on the blower to Pollock and tell him
to turn the Land Rover around and come back to Carrick.”

“Sean, this is Inspector Dalziel’s arrest,”
Kelly said dubiously.

“That’s ok, I’ll deal with Inspector Dalziel.
Just get that Land Rover to turn round and return to the barracks.”

“Ok, Sean, I’ll do it but I don’t want
Inspector Dalziel giving me a hard time.”

“He won’t. Patch me through to his office will
you Kelly?”

“Ok, Sean.”

A short pause. . .

“Inspector Kenneth Dalziel, admin,
Carrickfergus RUC.”

“Dalziel, it’s Duffy.”

“You finally showed up did you? I have to tell
you Inspector Duffy that the competence of your department leaves a lot to be
desired. I found a scene of total disarray when I got there,” was his opening
sally. Dalziel was the son in law of a prominent high court judge but that
didn’t bother me as you knew his father in law probably couldn’t stand him
either.

“Listen to me, Kenny, if you interfere in any
future CID investigations or boss around any of my men ever again I am going to
come round your house and take that gnome you have with the fishing pole in your
front garden and shove gnome and pole up your arse until the wee red hat comes out
your bloody throat. Savvy?”

“You can’t talk to me that way, Duffy, I’ve
been promoted to—”

“I’ll talk to you anyway I fucking please, you
useless ballbag fuck. Now I’m having Mrs Deauville brought back to Carrick to
be questioned and I don’t want you to interfere, ok?”

“I’m sending her to Castlereagh to be processed.
In my opinion she is a category 1 offender who needs to be centrally processed:
a dead drug dealer’s wife who assaulted a police officer. . .”

“The facts aren’t in but don’t let that stop you giving
your opinion.”

“If that Land Rover shows up here, Duffy, and
I’m sending it back to Castlereagh.”

“I dare you. I fucking dare you to do that,
Dalziel!” I said and slammed the phone down.

I took a few deep breaths and went back
outside.

The body had been covered with a sheet, the
goat was being held back by a kid but the crowd was even bigger now as we found
ourselves in that unhappy window between people returning from their morning
dole appointments and daytime TV kicking in. The sky was overcast and drizzling
but what I wouldn’t give for a short thunder shower to send these gawkers
indoors.

Lawson had gone out onto the street and was now
locked in a battle of wills with the ice-cream van driver who had pulled his
truck right up in front of the victim’s house in the exact place where the forensic
team would want to park their Land Rovers. Sensing his youth and low rank the
van driver and the crowd were hassling Lawson with invective extravagant even
by the somewhat elevated standards of Sunnylands Estate.

It would never do. I pushed my way through the
unwashed mob and told the ice cream van driver to fuck off before I arrested
him for obstruction.

He could see the fury behind my eyes and like
a sensible chap he fucked off back to the end of the street again. Some of the
crowd went with him and satisfied with this momentum I turned to the others.

“This is a police matter. Get back inside your
houses or I’ll lift the bloody lot of you!” I said, seething.

A heavy-set red faced man with a minister’s
collar got in my face. “I’m the Reverend William McFaul, I’m chairman of the
residents association. How dare you speak to us like that! This is our street
and our concern.”

“Reverend McFaul please tell your friends and parishioners
to get back inside their homes. There’s nothing to see here. These people are obstructing
police officers at their work and contaminating a crime scene,” I replied.

“We have a right to see what the RUC is doing
on our street!” McFaul said, trembling with rage.

“You bloody don’t.”

“I’m a God fearing man. I’m not used to such
language,” McFaul said.

“Language? You mean ‘bloody’? Do you also clutch your
pearls and occasionally get the vapours? Come on now, move along,” I said pushing
him away from the house.

“I’ll report you!”

“That’s fine but just make sure you do it from the
other side of the street,” I said giving him another shove.

“You are an extremely rude young man. What is your name?
I am going to call your supervisor,” McFaul said taking a diary and a pencil
out of his overcoat pocket.

“My name is Inspector Kenneth Dalziel of Carrickfergus
RUC. My supervisor is Chief Inspector McArthur. Report me all you want,” I said
giving him a last push and walking back to the crime scene with a feeling of
immense satisfaction.

Lawson had found some “RUC CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS”
tape and was stretching it in front of the house.

“Forensic are on their way,” I told him. “Should be
here in twenty minutes.”

Before Lawson could reply an old lady in full old lady
rig popped out of the throng and began jabbing her finger in my chest. “Is this
what it takes for the police to finally come? A murder? I call and call and
youse take half the night to get here. It’s a disgrace. The kids racing up and
down the street, joyriding. Drinking at all hours. Smoking them funny
cigarettes. Bad manners to the old folks. The whole country is going to the
dogs.”

“I quite agree, madam. What’s your name?”

“Ivy McAleese,” she said.

“Well Mrs McAleese, Constable Lawson here will take
your statement,” I said. Lawson flipped open his notebook and began writing
down the woman’s litany of complaints. I listened with interest: kids, drugs,
loud music. The old bird didn’t know how lucky she had it. She and all the good
people of Belfast and the north Belfast suburbs: lucky. These were the good
days. Couldn’t they see the future? Entropy maximising. Neighbour against neighbour.
Blood feud. The disintegration of this lost lonely province into warring camps.
The falcon cannot hear the falconer.
. .And good luck getting the cops then, love. Call 999 and it’ll just ring and
ring and ring.

But we’re not quite down that shit hole yet are we?

When the old lady had given Lawson a pageful I thanked
her for her cooperation and ducked under the police tape with my young
colleague and lifted the sheet from the body.

The crossbow bolt had hit the victim
close to his left shoulder. There was very little bleeding on the denim jacket
around the wound but there was a lot of dried blood on either side of his
stomach. . .ergo he’d been shot in the chest first and he’d managed to make a
run for it. Run almost up to his front door before they’d shot him again in the
back.

“Sergeant McCrabban said on the
phone that he was a known drug dealer.”

“We ran the victim’s ID through the
computer and half a dozen arrests came for drugs and drug possession in Bangor
and before that London. He’s from here originally but he’s lived mostly in
London if his charge sheet is to be believed.”

“That’s why I’d never heard of him. When
did he move to Carrick?”

“According to the local residents
about four weeks ago.”

“Ah so he was the new drug dealer on
the block.”

“Yes sir.”

“What type of drugs?”

“Sergeant McCrabban had Sergeant
Mulvenny go through the house with his canine team.”

“Sniffer dogs. Good thinking that. What did they come
up with?”

“Nothing, although Sergeant Mulvenny says Felix got
excited.”

“Who’s Felix?”

“He’s the heroin dog.”

“Did you find any heroin?”

“No but Sergeant Mulvenny thinks
there may have been some in a couple of empty paint tins at the back of the
house.”

“So he’s moved the drugs off site.”

“Yes sir.”

“We’ll have to look into that.”

“Yes, sir.”

“All right now. Our victim. What do
you see in front of you? We don’t always have to let forensic tell us
everything. We can make a few deductions on our own can’t we?”

“Yes, sir. Uhm, well, the victim’s
boots are clearly very expensive so he must have been making a lot of money.”

I clocked the boots and yes they did
look expensive. Snakeskin cowboy boots with flat soles. Slippery flat stoles
that must have been a bugger to run in. If he’d been wearing sneakers the poor
bastard might have lived.

“What else do you see, Lawson?” I
asked looking into his eager blue eyes. He was still a junior detective but Lawson
wasn’t like the usual time wasters they gave you to fill out your CID team.
Lawson was smart and he had peeler wisdom beyond his years. Sooner or later
some git from Belfast would spot his talent and promote him to detective sergeant
and poach him away to the fraud squad or Special Branch. Five years from now –
if I was still alive – I’d probably be working for him.

“Not much bleeding from the crossbow
bolt is there?” he said.

“No. There isn’t. So what does that
tell you?”

“It wasn’t the primary wound?”

“Exactly.”

“Oh I see, sir. There’s blood under the body. So he
was shot in the front first, he turned, ran, and then they shot him again in
the back?”

“That would certainly be my take. He must be lying on
the first bolt which is in his stomach or chest. You can’t really hide a
crossbow behind your back as you’re walking towards someone so I’d guess that
the assailant was in a vehicle. And unless it was a driveby (and I’ve never
heard of a crossbow driveby) Mr Deauville was probably approaching the vehicle offering
to sell them drugs.”

Lawson nodded in agreement.

“What else do you see? Tell me about the leather
jacket. Where would you get a fancy jacket like that, Lawson?” I asked feeling
the jacket’s soft leather sleeve.

Lawson also felt the sleeve. “From
Slater and Sons in Glasgow, sir. Three hundred and fifty quid. He liked the
style so much he brought two of them. Got a fifty quid discount.”

“How did you do that? Some kind of latent
paranormal ability?”

“Uh, no, sir, there’s a stack of
receipts on a spike in his dining room. Had a look through them while we were
waiting for you.”

“According to the rent bill from the
housing executive he only moved in on January 15th – that’s why we
hadn’t heard of him yet in Carrick CID, although he has a charge sheet as long as your arm. Robberies,
burglaries and it looks like for the last year or two he’s been dealing drugs.”

“Heroin?”

“Sergeant Mulvenny’s dog thinks so.”

“How does a brand new drug dealer
suddenly break into the heroin trade?”

“Don’t know so, sir.”

“Enemies?”

“He’s not a known player so I
imagine the local paramilitaries here weren’t too happy with someone muscling
in on their territory. And taking the temperature of the local residents – Mrs
McAleese and the minister there – apparently Mr Deauville hadn’t gone out of
his way to make friends.”

“At least his missus was upset at
his demise. What did she tell you before she was carted off?”

“Not much, sir.”

“Hates the cops, eh?”

“English isn’t her mother tongue.”

“No need to bring her mother’s tongue into the discussion,
little too early in the morning for that sort of talk.”

“What? Sir I wasn’t trying—”

“I know,” I said wearily. “Where’s she from?”

“Bulgaria. We couldn’t understand anything.”

“Bulgaria?”

“Bulgaria.”

“How did those two love birds meet?”

“He went on a package trip to the Bulgarian Riviera,
sir.”

“There’s a Bulgarian Riviera?”

“Yes sir, on the Black Sea coast.”

“Didn’t know that. Holiday romance?”

“Apparently so, sir. She came back
with him last year and they married in September. This according to Bangor
RUC.”

“And she doesn’t speak any English?”

“Not any that she’s used with us.
How’s your Bulgarian, sir?”

“Rusty I’ve got to admit. Although
it’s one of the Romance languages I think.”

“No sir. You’re thinking of Romanian which has a Latin
root. It’s a Slavic language.”

“Ok. Well without wishing to slight the intellectual
capacities of the station I have a feeling we don’t have a Slavic speaker on
the staff.”

“We don’t. Already checked, sir.”

“So did she say anything
about what happened?”

“She said plenty. I wrote some of it
down.”

Lawson flipped open his notebook. “When
we arrived she was hugging the body and screaming obícham te! obícham te! over and over.”

“What do you think that means? Is
that his name in Bulgarian do you think?”

Lawson gave me one of those looks
that young people reserve for older people when they wish to convey their patience
with the oldster’s folly.

“Te is probably the tu form in
Bulgarian, wouldn’t you say, sir?”

“Oh. . .yes, I’m sure your right. So
she’s saying what to happened to you
or I love you, or something like
that.”

“I imagine so, sir.”

“Good looking woman?”

Lawson coloured. “Uhm, I don’t know.
I suppose if you like that sort of thing, uhm. . .”

“No one is going to accuse you of a
lack of gallantry, Lawson. Is she young?”

“Mid twenties, sir.”

“Yes, good contact to have if you’re
dealing heroin. Young, reasonably attractive woman with a Bulgarian passport. Bulgaria
is right next Turkey I believe where the emerald fields of marijuana and the
scarlet fields of poppy grow in the plentiful Mediterranean sunshine. And of
course there’s the— Oh shit, that bloody goat again.”

The goat was tied to a shopping
trolley that had been filled with bricks. There were about thirty bricks in the
shopping trolley which probably weighed about forty pounds. If sufficiently
motivated the goat could in fact have pulled the shopping trolley behind it and
made an admittedly slow escape through the estate. The goat however, being a
goat, was smarter than that and had decided to eat the rope with which it had
been tied to the trolley. It had been munching on this rope since we had
arrived and presumably for much of the previous couple of days. Escape was now
imminent.

“That goat is our only eyewitness,
Lawson. Get the tow rope from my car and tie it up properly and when you’ve
done that— Oh my God here comes our old friend, back from the wars!” I said
getting to my feet.

Detective Sergeant McCrabban was
getting out of a Land Rover that he’d driven back here himself from the
hospital.

I ran over and give the big galoot a
hug, which, of course, horrified him— Crabbie not being the biggest fan of
outward shows of affection or human contact.

“Crabbie! It’s so bloody good to see
you. Jesus, can’t I leave you alone for two days without someone trying to kill
you?” I said pumping his hand.

“No one tried to kill me, Sean. Mrs
Deauville was just a little upset that I asked her to keep away from the body
until the forensic officers came. Where are they by the way?”

“Came and went mate like the pack of
wankers they are,” I said. “Lawson, the goat, please! So how’s your shoulder,
mate?”

“It’s completely fine. No stitches,
just a plaster and a tetanus shot. No hard feelings on my part - the woman was clearly distressed. Where is
Mrs Deauville the way?” Crabbie asked.

I filled him in on the whole sorry
business, leaving out my observations on Kenny Dalziel’s competence “. . .so
she’s back in Carrick now but we’ll need a Bulgarian speaker if we’re going to
interrogate her,” I said.

“That’s going to be tricky, Sean. I’ve
checked. There is no Bulgarian consulate in Northern Ireland. I called up
Queens and they don’t have anyone on staff who speaks the language – they suggested that we contact the school of Slavic
languages in London or the Bulgarian Embassy in Dublin.”

“Then that’s what we’ll do. What
about this first victim who you said got shot by this crossbow maniac? What’s
his name and where’s he?”

“Morrison is his name. Unpleasant wee
toe-rag. He’s down in Larne hospital. A dozen stitches, lost a bit of blood but
he’s fine.”

“He see anything?”

“He told me he didn’t see who shot
him and has no idea why anyone would target him.”

“But he’s definitely a drug dealer
too?”

“Oh yes. 11 convictions for
possession over the last five years and he’s in the files as a current dealer.”

“Was he shot from a car?”

“He quote didn’t see anything
unquote. And quote, even if I had, I’m no bloody grass, unquote.”

“I’ll talk to him tomorrow. Him and
Mrs Deauville if we can get a Bulgarian speaker.”

Two Land Rovers pulled up and a team
of forensic officers got out led by the grim lardy face of Chief Inspector
Payne.

I shook his hand and he shook the
hands of Lawson and McCrabban who he remembered from the sad case of Lily Bigelow.

“Good to see you, Sean. You’re
looking well. . .for someone twice your age. Is your man going to lynch that
goat, Duffy? It looks like a nasty piece of work,” Payne said, lighting a
ciggie and smoking it with the kind of determination you seldom saw anymore in
cops under fifty.

“This goat will not be harmed on my
watch. He reminds me of me: determined, obstinate, omnivorous. Take him round
the back of the house and tie him up Lawson,” I said.

When Lawson had gone Crabbie said in
an undertone “It’s not a ‘he’, it’s a nanny goat, Sean,” which brought a
hideous cackle from Payne.

“Duffy thinks of himself as
she-goat. Hilarious!” Payne said.

“Don’t you have work to do, mate?”

“Aye I suppose I better get cracking. You lads need to
see how a professional does his job.”

The crowd control officers from the police station finally
arrived and I gave them a mini seminar on how to canvas for witness statements:
no leading questions, keep everything as general as possible and the old who,
what, when, where, how. Incredibly and depressingly this was news to most of
them.

I let them all get to work and went
inside to make some phone calls.

The Bulgarian Embassy in Dublin was
very cooperative and said that they would send up a translator and consular
representative first thing in the morning.

Payne found me reading the first
completely unhelpful statements from Mr Deauville’s neighbours in the living
room.

“I determined the cause of death,” he announced.

“Yes, well, that one didn’t exactly take Dr Gideon
Fell.”

“Who?”

“What did you find out?”

“You plods in CID won’t have
realised it but your victim was actually shot twice!” He said with unconcealed
triumph. “He was shot in the back, of course, but it was a cross bow bolt in
the stomach that killed him. It nicked what I believe to be the superior
mesenteric vein and he bled to death. Even if he’d made it inside here he would
have died.”

“Tell me about these crossbow bolts.”

“Well I’m no expert on that, but
they look normal to me. Barbed crossbow bolts for target shooting or hunting.
I’ve got the shoulder one in an evidence bag for you. The pathologist will need
to remove the other one.”

“Time of death?”

“About one this morning. I’m not
going to be more specific than that. The last time we had a case together the
medical examiner gave me an awful bollocking for being too specific about the
time of death,” he said, again recalling the Lily Bigelow case.

“Very good, Francis,” I said shaking
his hand again.

“The boys from the morgue are here
if you want to give them the nod.”

I went outside and gave permission
for the body to be removed as I read the last of the witness statements. None
of Deauville’s neighbours would admit to anything. They didn’t really know the
deceased, he had kept to himself, they didn’t know any of his acquaintances,
had never heard of any threats to his life or person.

This was also the bog standard response to pretty much
any murder in Northern Ireland, especially a murder that seemed to have a
paramilitary connection. For what seemed like the millionth time in my career I
had encountered Belfast’s code of omerta that babes must learn at their
mother’s knee.

I looked at the crossbow bolt in the evidence bag. Didn’t
seem remarkable but I’d find out more about it.

I put Lawson in charge of a couple
of constables to thoroughly search the Deauville residence before Crabbie and I
returned to the station in my mercifully unfucked with Beemer.

Mrs Deauville had been returned to
Carrick CID. She was literally spitting with fury and they had put her back in
the cells rather than Interview Room 1 where she couldn’t wreck the two way
mirror and video recording equipment. She wasn’t bad looking if you didn’t mind
chain smoking peroxide blondes.

Crabbie and I tried a few questions
but she appeared to have only a few stock phrases in English:

“You fucking shit. . .Six pack beer. . .Move your arse
grandma. . .Your clothes shite. . .” which were probably enough to get you
through six months of life in Northern Ireland but wouldn’t really do in a
murder inquiry.

Her name was Elena and even after tea and biscuits she
was visibly upset so I sent down a brave WPC to comfort her with a blanket and
more tea and biscuits.

“How do we know she didn’t do it?” I asked Crabbie.
“She has a temper.”

“No sign of a crossbow in the house.”

“She shoots her husband and throws the murder weapon
in the sea?”

“And leaves his body outside the house all night?”

“She was drunk when she did it. Wakes up this morning.
Oh my God what have I done? Calls the cops, gets the waterworks going.”

“Why would she do it?”

“They had a fight? He was having an affair?”

“She seemed genuinely upset to me.”

“Remorse?”

“Maybe,” Crabbie conceded. “But we didn’t find a
receipt for a crossbow in the house.”

“Who keeps receipts? Oh wait, he does. Still, lets bring
a picture of Deauville and his wife to every shop selling crossbows in Ulster.
If the shopkeeps recognise either of them we probably are dealing with a
domestic,” I said.

“You could be right. But then there’s the other case.”

“The other case, yes, damn it.”

I made some more phone calls. Special Branch informed
me that there was indeed a vigilante group called Direct Action Against Drug
Dealers (DAADD) who occasionally killed drug dealers in Belfast and environs.
DAADD, of course, was just one of many cover names for the IRA and its
offshoots and splinter groups.

“If this was a DAADD killing they probably would have
already claimed it so they could make the evening news. They’re very media
savvy,” Trevor Finlay from Special Branch intel informed me.

“We haven’t had any claims of responsibility, yet,” I
told him.

“Nor us.”

“Meaning?”

“Might not be DAADD. Unlikely they would drive all the
way up to Carrickfergus anyway. If I was to guess, Sean, I’d say that this was
something else.”

“Thanks Trevor.”

I called up Roy Taylor in statistics and he told me
that there had been twelve deaths by crossbow in the last thirty years, all of
them manslaughters or non prosecutable accidents.

I found out that there were two shops in Northern
Ireland that sold crossbows. Both in Belfast. I called both and was told the
rather disheartening information that they had sold over two hundred crossbows
each in the last year. The shops were not legally obliged to keep the names and
addresses of their buyers and none had. I gave them the make and serial number
of the bolt in the evidence bag and unfortunately this was the most common type
of crossbow bolt. Tens of thousands of them were sold in Europe every year.

Around five o’clock Lawson came back with the
PC’s from the house and area search. The house, rubbish bins, Mill Stream and
skip search had revealed no dumped crossbow. The house search had revealed no
more drugs or useful enemies list or even more useful address book but Lawson
had found about a thousand quid in a paper bag under the oven and an old .455
Webley semi automatic pistol that had to be 50 years old if it was a day.

“This thing’s an antique,” Crabbie
said, impressed.

“It looks like he never cleaned the
mechanism, I doubt it would even fire,” I replied.

“Should we take it to the range and find out?” Lawson
suggested eagerly.

Crabbie and I shook our heads together. The dodgy
looking old thing would probably explode in our hands and Carrick CID had
suffered enough today.

“Oh go on, sir,” Lawson pleaded.

“We take that down the range, it misfires and gets me
right in the kisser.”

“You’re a glass half empty kind of guy, sir, aren’t
you?”

“I don’t even acknowledge the existence of the glass,
son.”

Crabbie nodded at the forbidding wisdom of this
remark.

I yawned. “It’s getting late. Case conference tomorrow
morning, you lads can go home. First order of business on the morrow will be to
question the wife,” I said.

I typed up a brief summary of all that we knew and closed
my eyes for a bit in my recliner. I must have gone straight out because I heard
a voice from deep deep in the well ask “Is he asleep do you think? Can we nudge
him?”

“Speak Lord! Thy servant heareth!” I said and opened
my eyes on Constables Collins and Fletcher. “Oh it’s you two. What do you
want?”

“The Chief Inspector wants a progress—”

“Tell him I’ll be there in two minutes. Just enough
time for him to get the good whisky out of its hiding place in the bottom shelf
of his filing cabinet.”

I gathered my thoughts, ran a hand through my hair and
went into the Chief Inspector’s office to give him my formal summary of the
day’s events.

Chief Inspector McArthur had been our gaffer for three
years now and the disappointment was beginning to show on all sides. A Scot
who’d been trained at the police college in Hendon he was a high flyer who’d
probably expected to be done with his rotation in Carrickfergus RUC in about
eighteen months before getting a promotion to Superintendent and a move to
somewhere more interesting. It hadn’t happened and I sometimes wondered if he
blamed me and my bad voodoo for his career doldrums.

“Ah Duffy, have a seat. Whisky?”

For a while the Chief Inspector and I had been on collegial
first name terms but now it was mysteriously back to “Duffy.” Had I done
something wrong? Already? I’d only been back from my hols a few hours.

“No thank you, sir, Beth hates it when I come home
from duty with whisky on my breath,” I said.

“Yes, she’s right, I suppose we all should cut down
on—”

“But if you insist, sir, just two fingers of that 16
year old Jura would hit the spot about now.”

He made me a Jura and poured a Johnny Walker and soda for
himself and I sat down opposite. He read my report while I examined him. He was
a boyish looking 35 or 36 with no grey hair that I could see in his elegantly
parted locks. I dug his Top Man black suit too. Nice cut, nice lines and if I’d
been 15 years younger and liked suits or him I’d of asked him about it.

“Before we begin I should let you know, Duffy, that
Inspector Dalziel is thinking of writing up a formal complaint about you.”

“Is he now? ”

“Yes. I tried to talk him out of it, but he’s pretty adamant.
Says you were rude to him over the phone. Make it go away, Duffy, eh? Apologise
to him, ok?”

“Yes, sir, I’ll take care of it, sir.”

“Changing the subject: your team did all those blood
tests we asked for last week didn’t they?”

“Yes sir. For the annual fitness thing? Is that coming
up soon, sir?”

“I shouldn’t really say, Duffy, but I can tell you
that we’re doing things very differently this year. We’re taking officer
fitness much more seriously.”

“I know. I’m always telling the men that, sir. My crew
is as fit as a fiddle and I’m a model of health myself, sir. I’m just back from
Donegal; you know what it’s like out there: walking on the beach, hiking in the
woods, mountain climbing, swimming.”

He lowered his voice and leaned forward
conspiratorially. “Hmmm, yes, well, make sure you and all your team are here at
the station tomorrow, I’ve heard a rumour that Chief Superintendent Strong is
coming in.”

“Really? So it is tomorrow is it? The fitness test
thing?”

“You didn’t hear that from me but just make sure you
and all your team are at the station in the morning and they don’t go on the
piss tonight.”

“In Sunnylands Estate it says here.
I went there once. Its distinguishing features seemed to be religious bigotry, cockfighting
and despair.”

“Cockfighting?”

“So I imagine, or perhaps dog fighting. Unsavoury
place. Residents looked deranged and desperate to escape. Afraid to drive my
Merc through it and I certainly wouldn’t park it there.”

“No, sir.”

He slid the report back across the
desk. “All seems to be in order here, Duffy. I take it you are not going to ask
for additional resources on this one or God-forbid over-time.”

“Too early to say, sir. The case could go in any
number of directions.”

He frowned. “Well there’s no point going overboard is
there?”

“Why’s that, sir?”

“It’s just another dead drug dealer
isn’t it? No family, wife’s a foreigner, he’s a bloody repeat offender. You
know what everyone’s going to say around here: good riddance. Pardon my
language, Duffy, but who’s going to give a damn about him?”

I looked at the Chief Inspector for
an uncomfortable five seconds. This kind of talk annoyed me no end.

“I
am going to give a damn about him, sir. My
men are going to give a damn about him. Carrick
CID is going to give a damn about him,” I said and with the rule of threes
ringing in his skull I finished the whisky, set the glass down on his desk, and
exited the office with enough fizzy melodrama to have made the heart of the octogenarian
Bette Davis in far off California skip a beat.

I was still grinning when I made it
back to Coronation Road ten minutes later.

About Me

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I was born and grew up in Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland. After studying philosophy at Oxford University I emigrated to New York City where I lived in Harlem for seven years working in bars, bookstores, building sites and finally the basement stacks of the Columbia University Medical School Library in Washington Heights. In 2000 I moved to Denver, Colorado where I taught high school English and started writing fiction in earnest. My first full length novel Dead I Well May Be was shortlisted for the 2004 Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award and was picked by Booklist as one of the 10 best crime novels of the year. In 2008 I moved to St. Kilda, Melbourne, Australia with my wife and kids and started writing full time.

I'm probably best known for my Sean Duffy books. The first Sean Duffy novel, The Cold Cold Ground, won the 2013 Spinetingler Award and was picked as one of the best crime novels of the year by The Times.

The second Sean Duffy novel, I Hear The Sirens In The Street, won the 2014 Barry Award.

In The Morning I'll Be Gone (Sean Duffy #3) won the 2014 Ned Kelly Award.

Gun Street Girl (Duffy #4) was shortlisted for the 2016 Edgar Award, the 2015 Ned Kelly Award, The 2016 Anthony Award and was picked as one of the best books of 2015 by The Boston Globe and by The Irish Times.

All Hail McKinty!

"If Raymond Chandler had grown up in Northern Ireland he would have written The Cold Cold Ground."

---The Times

"Hardboiled charm, evocative dialogue, an acute sense of place and a sardonic sense of humour make McKinty one of our greatest crime fiction writers."

---The Guardian

"A literary thriller that is as concerned with exploring the poisonously claustrophobic demi-monde of Northern Ireland during the Troubles, and the self-sabotaging contradictions of its place and time, as it is with providing the genre’s conventional thrills and spills. The result is a masterpiece of Troubles crime fiction: had David Peace, Eoin McNamee and Brian Moore sat down to brew up the great Troubles novel, they would have been very pleased indeed to have written The Cold Cold Ground."

---The Irish Times

"McKinty is a gifted man with poetry coursing through his veins and thrilling writing dripping from his fingertips."

---The Sunday Independent

"Adrian McKinty is fast gaining a reputation as the finest of the new generation of Irish crime writers, and it's easy to see why on the evidence of The Cold Cold Ground."

---The Glasgow Herald

"McKinty is a storyteller with the kind of style and panache that blur the line between genre and mainstream."

---Kirkus Reviews

"McKinty's literate expertly crafted crime novel confirms his place as one of his generation's leading talents."

---Publishers Weekly

"McKinty crackles with raw talent. His dialogue is superb, his characters rich and his plotting tight and seemless. He writes with a wonderful and wonderfully humorous flair for language raising his work above most crime genre offerings and bumping it right up against literature."

---The San Francisco Chronicle

"The first of McKinty's Forsythe novels, "Dead I Well May Be," was intense, focused and entirely brilliant. This one is looser-limbed, funnier...so, I imagine, is the middle book, "The Dead Yard," which I haven't read but which Publishers Weekly included on its list of the 12 best novels of 2006, along with works by Peter Abrahams, Richard Ford, Cormac McCarthy and George Pelecanos."

---The Washington Post

"McKinty, who grew up in Northern Ireland, has an ear for language and a taste for violence, and he serves up a terrifically gory, swiftly paced thriller."

---The Miami Herald

"There's nothing like an Irish tough guy. And we're not talking about Gentleman Gerry Cooney here. No, we mean the new breed of bare-knuckle Irish writers like Adrian McKinty, Ken Bruen and John Connolly who are bringing fresh life to the crime fiction genre."

---The Philadelphia Inquirer

"McKinty's writing is dark and witty with gritty realism, spot on dialogue, and fascinating characters."

---The Chicago Sun-Times

"If you like your noir staples such as beautiful women, betrayal, murder, mixed with a heavy dose of blood, crunched bones, body parts flying around served up with some throwaway humour, you need look no further, McKinty delivers all of this with the added bonus that the writing is pitch perfect."

"This is a terrific read. McKinty gives us a strong non stop story with attractive characters and fine writing."

---The Morning Star

"[McKinty] draws us close and relates a fantastic tale of murder and revenge in low, wry tones, as if from the next barstool...he drops out of conversational mode to throw in a few breathtaking fever-dream sequences for flavor. And then he springs an ending so right and satisfying it leaves us numb with delight and ready to pop for another round. Start the cliche machine: This is a profoundly satisfying book from a major new talent and one of the best crime fiction debuts of the year."

---Booklist

"The story is soaked in the holy trinity of the noir thriller: betrayal, money and murder, but seen through with a panache and political awareness that give McKinty a keen edge over his rivals."

---The Big Issue

"A darkly humorous cross between a hard-boiled mystery and a Beat novel."

---The St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"A roller coaster of highs and lows, light humour and dark deeds, the powerful undercurrent of McKinty's talent will swiftly drag you away. Let's hope the author does not slow down anytime soon."

---The Irish Examiner

"A virtual carnival of slaughter."

---The Wall Street Journal

"McKinty has once again harnassed the power of poetry, violence, lust and revenge to forge another terrific novel."

"McKinty writes with the soul of a poet; his prose dances off the pages with Old World grace and haunting intensity. It's crime fiction on the level of Michael Connolly with the conviction of James Hall."

---The Jackson Clarion-Ledger

"The Bloomsday Dead is the explosive final installment in a trilogy of kinetic thrillers."

---The New York Times

"McKinty's Dead Trilogy has been praised by critics, who call it "intense," "masterful" and "loaded with action." If your reading pleasure leans toward thrillers offering suspense, close calls, wry wit, sharp dialogue, local color and sudden mayhem, you wont do better."